First post, by WDStudios
Blood II: The Chosen, based on the Lithtech 1.0 engine, was released in 1998. It has both a software rendering mode and a Direct3D rendering mode, and both malfunction pretty badly on modern graphics cards. Software rendering doesn't do transparency, fog/smoke effects, colored lighting, et cetera correctly, and textures are often warped as if you're looking at them from an angle different from the one at which you're actually looking at them. The colored lighting isn't too surprising, since Quake II in software rendering wouldn't do colored lighting either, but it's also not really important. Games look fine without colored lighting. The transparency, smoke/fog effects, and warped textures, on the other hand, are noticeably horribad, and don't tell me that software rendering just can't do transparency. All the breakable windows in Quake II look fine in software rendering mode. With Direct3D rendering, the problems get much worse: menus become invisible and the HUD flickers in and out of existence at random.
I don't recall this always being the case. I'm betting that it has something to do with modern graphics cards... but what?
There are also third-party patches to get around an issue where the game crashes at any resolution with more than 1000 scanlines. Given that I used to play the game at 1600 x 1200 with no third-party workarounds or patches, I'm guessing that this also has something to do with modern graphics cards... but what?
What's the newest, beefiest graphics card that will play Blood II correctly, and why?
Aliens vs. Predator 2, based on a later version of the Lithtech engine, still works 100% correctly on a Geforce GT 730, if anyone's wondering.
Since people like posting system specs:
LGA 2011
Core i7 Sandy Bridge @ 3.6 ghz
4 GB of RAM in quad-channel
Geforce GTX 780
1600 x 1200 monitor
Dual-booting WinXP Integral Edition and Win7 Pro 64-bit
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XP compatibility is the hill that I will die on.